Video compression is used in a variety of current and emerging products. Video compression is used in digital television set-top boxes, digital satellite systems, high definition television (HDTV) decoders, digital versatile disk (DVD) players, video conferencing, and other digital video applications. Video compression allows images of video content to be compressed by removing non-essential features of the video content. Compressing video content reduces the storage area needed to store the content. Compressed video content may be transmitted faster than un-compressed video content.
Image compression standards used in the consumer electronics industry are block based. One example of a block based compression standard is the Advanced Video Coding (AVC)/H.264 standard developed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in cooperation with the International Standards Organization (ISO). Block based video compression typically introduces artifacts including block noise and mosquito noise into image data. Artifacts are produced as a result of quantization of the imaged data performed in a video compression encoder. These artifacts are common in low bit rate image data. The artifacts also occur occasionally in good quality material like blue ray encoded film. A person viewing a video composed of digital images can sometimes detect these artifacts. The large size of modern displays allows people viewing images to detect more block noise and mosquito noise than when viewing images with traditionally smaller displays. A better way to reduce digital image noise is desirable.